Media Frontend Distro

[neufena]

I currently run 2 Ubuntu machines, one desktop and one sever. I’ve just been given a Thinkpad laptop with a broken screen and no hard disk. However it has a (working) s-video out so I was planning to use it as a media frontend to the files stored on the server. Can anyone suggest a good distro for this? I’d really like something that has a media browser so I can find music/movies by genre, artist, title etc. also as the laptop has no disk I’m looking for something that can be installed to usb drive or booted over the network.

I’ve found a few distros that are based around Mythtv but I’m not looking to record TV, just play back existing files. Any ideas??

Thanks,
Neufena

[RAV TUX]

have you tried GeeXboX?
http://geexbox.org/en/index.html

What is the GeeXboX ...

The question you may wonder is probably : "Dude, what exactly is this GeeXboX project I've heard so much about ?" ;-)
Well, you're at the right place !

Ok, we'll try to make it simple. The GeeXboX is no more than an awesome standalone media player. Why such a name ? Well, its main purpose is to play DivX movies and, as everybody usually call this kind of projects DivX boxes, we'll just prepended a "GeeX", cause that's for the geeks you all are ;-)

So, GeeXboX is a full operating system, running under Linux and based on the excellent MPlayer. No need for a hard drive, you just have to put the GeeXboX bootable CD into the CD-Drive of any Pentium-class or Apple Macintosh computer to boot it. Moreover, GeeXboX is free software, created as open-source software. This means that everyone can modify it and build his own release of the GeeXboX.

You may wonder why you should have to boot another operating system to play your media files, but just think about the Mini-ITX platforms like VIA Epia/Eden or Shuttle barebones. It's now affordable to bring DivX to your home cinema, plugging this kind of computer directly to your TV !!

At the time of the first development releases (Dec. 2002), it was only capable of playing DivX movies, but now, nearly every kind of media file can be played with GeeXboX, with the OS supporting :

* MPEG 1/2 movies (MPG files, VCDs, DVDs ...)
* MPEG 4 movies (DivX, XviD, H.264 ...)
* RealMedia and Windows Media movies.
* OggMedia streams
* Matroska streams
* Audio streams like : MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV (AudioCD), AC3, DTS, MusePack (MPC), FLAC ...
* Network streams : WebRadio and WebTV through SHOUTcast.
* Watching analog TV and digital DVB
* Playing analog Radio streams.
* Playing files from your local network (LAN) through remote NFS, Samba (i.e. Windows) or UPnP shares.

(http://www.ubuntuforums.org/)Want more ?

You may think that such a thing requires a new generation computer ;-) That's where you're wrong !! An old P2-400 with 64 MB of RAM will be quite powerful enough to let the magic play. Also, the GeeXboX ISO only takes about 7 MB on disc. And of course, the whole thing can be managed by a either a keyboard, a remote controller or a joystick, thanks to its full OSD (On Screen Display) Menu.
So, what are you still waiting for ?? Xmas ?

Just go to the Downloads (http://geexbox.org/en/downloads.html) section and enjoy ;-)


The GeeXboX's Team

[neufena]

Thanks,

I'd seen GeexBox and it was a great starting point but I was hoping to find something with a media libary of some kind, similar to amarok as I have a large collection of mp3's and quite a few films.

Cheers,

[Titus A Duxass]

For Audio files you could use GiantDisc.

For an interesting project you could go with mythtv, just install it without the tv card and then tailor the xml menu files to remove the options that you do not require.

The myth installation and set-up process grumbles about have no tv card, I ignored it.

I have a similar set up at home, it plays my CDs, DVDs, Streams On-line Radio and gives me the local weather.